The film isn’t a white knuckle ride, and the pacing can be slow at times, but this is one of those cases where that’s sort of the point, and you certainly don’t begrudge it. A Hijacking is an absorbing, highly moving film.

If there was ever any doubt as to Zvyagintsev's position as one of world cinema's foremost auteurs, it's put to rest here. His filmmaking has always been superb, but he's never taken on the state of his nation in the way he does here. And that makes "Leviathan" not just masterful but also hugely important.

The picture is a triumph: it's arguably Garland’s tightest and most fascinating screenplay to date, brought to life with meticulous filmmaking and sensational performances. It's the first great film of 2015.

Fans of Polley’s work to date will be delighted by a documentary that serves simultaneously as a gripping mystery, a moving record of a family and a fascinating investigation into the nature of truth, memory, and the documentary form itself.

The film's not merely content with being a twisty psycho-thriller. Boyle and Hodge expertly tweak and tinker with your sympathies, and the characters you initially peg as heroes and villains may not be in the same place by the time things wrap up.

Mr Turner, though not without flaws, is something of a twilight culmination of Leigh's work, and very much one in which the filmmaker turns his lens on himself, as is so often the case when directors make movies about artists.

It won't change the face of cinema history, and it won't win any awards (it's too downright dirty for that), but it's furiously entertaining, and a very strong piece of drama from a director who hasn't much luck in the last thirty-odd years.

Best of all is the bad guy. Javier Bardem was always a tantalizing choice to play a Bond villain, and his Silva is a terrific creation, and certainly the most memorable villain in the series in decades.

It’s not exactly doing anything new, but it’s a muscular and textured piece of work that shifts assuredly through tones and genre, features a rich and rewarding performance from Cage, and another excellent turn from his young co-star Tye Sheridan.

Gunn’s careful to keep the focus on the central five, but certainly proves himself capable of the bigger canvas. The film really pops visually, with an admirably bright color palette (DP Ben Davis doing excellent work), and though there are occasionally some geography issues, the action is mostly satisfying.

Has more than its share of flaws, but it also gets its balance of tones right, proving spooky, involving and occasionally resonant, while still managing to bring something new to a well-worn tale, and providing a terrific lead part for one of the most promising actresses of her generation.

Powerful, engaging and, by the finale, moving. And in the end, At Any Price is certainly one of the most impressive reactions to the recent economic crisis (because that’s exactly what it is) that cinema has produced so far.

For all the film's flaws, Black brings enough to the table that it's far from a chore, and if this level of ingenuity and surprise can be maintained, there'll be no need for Tony to hang up his Iron Man helmet any time soon.

Godard's full length take on 3D is bold, brilliant and exactly what the format needed — a iconoclast taking it and making his own, and almost every time he frames a shot in three dimensions, from opening credits to the final moments, there's something attention-grabbing going on.

Queen & Country is hardly reinventing the wheel, but it's charming, evocative and (mostly) well-performed, and were Boorman to continue with his autobiographical cycle, we'd certainly welcome further installments.

It's an ambitious attempt to meld the kind of social realism that made the names of Andrea Arnold and Clio Barnard with a stripped-down genre thriller, an attempt that's only moderately successful, though it suggests Wolfe is a filmmaker of real promise.

It is overlong, and familiar, and never quite hits top gear -- it's never especially bad, but neither is it especially excellent, beyond the visual wow factor. But there's still a lot to admire in the film, not least that it's engaging from the first moment to the last.

There are enough rough edges and interesting kinks across the two-hour running time that you come out forgiving it for the more generic elements, though we'll acknowledge that the flaws might stick out more on a second viewing, when you're not just pleasantly surprised that the whole thing isn't a stinking mess.

Though there's an admirable sense of messiness to the scenes of family life, the screenplay itself is rather neat: one has a fairly solid sense of how things are going to play out from the early stages, and for the most part that's how it goes, ticking off a checklist of rather familiar beats along the way.

The film’s well-written, beautifully performed (not least from Huppert, who’s typically stunning as her icy, grief-stricken matriarch, and the moving Servillo, of “Il Divo” and “Gomorrah” fame), and nicely made, if a good 15 minutes overlong.

It is very much a first film, albeit one of rare ambition, and there's every reason to think that Benson will nail it next time around. The film's absolutely worth watching for the performances alone... But in and of itself, the "Them" version of The Disappearance Of Eleanor Rigby doesn't quite add up to the sum of its parts.

The film contains some memorable moments, and a pair of fine performances, but it’s hard not to feel that it would have proved more successful if it had stayed on the path it was heading down for the first forty minutes or so.

While there's a lot of fun to be had, Furious 6 doesn't quite hit the insane heights of "Fast Five," but we're sure it'll delight franchise fans who mostly want to see bald people butt heads, and moving vehicles crash into other moving vehicles.

The tension really is beautifully ramped up in these early scenes and gets an audience well prepped to watch carnage unfold around people you've truly come to care about. Then, when the thing goes off, it's not with a bang but with something more like a a whimper.

It’s never a painful watch, more of a faintly dull, seen-it-all-before one. If nothing else, it’s evidence that these days, being based on a true story isn’t enough to elevate a film in a well-worn genre ahead of the pack.

From a procedural perspective, the film is an insightful look into the life of a Secretary Of Defense, but as an exploration into how the war in Iraq was allowed to happen, it’s much, much less satisfying

There are moments of beauty and charm, but also ones that felt rather broad, like an extract from a live-action Disney movie or something. It is fitfully interesting, but nearly broke our twee detectors.

Avery can't commit to whether he's making a gritty "Animal Kingdom"-style crime picture, or a light caper film, and the final result is wonky in the extreme, particularly in the conclusion, which feels particularly muddled.

It'll pass a couple of hours on a rainy afternoon without too much trouble. But whether as an adventure tale, a thriller, or a morality play, Black Sea never quite makes a compelling enough case for its existence when better examples of the submarine genre are already out there.

Burshtein has devoted most of the last 20 years teaching and making film in that world, but here makes her international feature debut with a curious comedy-drama that has its strengths, but ultimately proves somewhat disappointing.

Given the talent assembled, the emptiness at its center only makes it feel like more of a waste. But it does look great, it does sound great (the score, by "Drive" soundtrack contributor Johnny Jewel, is one of the film's best elements), and can be fitfully interesting.

Kiefer Sutherland feels somewhat miscast as the mentor, but nowhere near as badly as Hudson is as the love interest. In all fairness, it’s a nightmare of a part, an artist (whose art is, as it turns out, is terrible) haunted by the recent death of her boyfriend, and seemingly unable to read basic human feelings and emotion. But Hudson doesn’t really help things, coming across more often than not as unintentionally funny.

The meat of the film is sadly, a tedious misstep for a director who, even when he's experimented in the past, has generally come up with something more interesting than this. It is, however, still better than "9 Songs"

The film, like the original, feels very haphazardly structured, a hotchpotch collection of scenes rather than a unified whole. There's also no tonal consistency, with Webb lurching awkwardly from quippy comedy to brooding drama to high tragedy in short spaces of time, undercutting all three modes as a result.

One can’t fault Hazanavicius’ motivations too much, especially given the lack of attention given to the events in Chechnya over the past fifteen years... It’s just a shame that he does it such a banal and trite way.